Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret". He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. His latest book is The Fix: How addiction is taking over your world. He also writes about classical music for The Spectator.

The nightmare of

What you are about to read is horrifying evidence of homeopathy at work in the developing world. It's from a woman blogger calling herself the "flip-flop homeopath" working in Senegal on behalf of the UK charity Frontline Homeopathy.

Homeopathic remedies are widely used in developing countries

Hat tip to Will Heaven from Counterknowledge.com, who has been rooting around the homeopathic subculture, and was appalled by this description of a man with acute viral pneumonia apparently being fobbed off with sugar pills.

The story is a couple of years old, but make no mistake: this sort of thing is gaining an ever stronger foothold in Africa just as Western doctors are finally recognising homeopathy for the quackery that it is. Here is the link to Frontline Homeopathy, which is established in Iraq, Romania, Senegal, Kenya, Nepal and Sri Lanka. And here's that terrifying blog entry:

8.30am: I haven't yet had my morning kankaliba (a hot drink made with local leaves and renowned for its health benefits) but the first patient has already arrived. Fortunately, it's not the malaria season yet, when I invariably open my bedroom door at 7am adorned only with a towel to find a queue of deathly sick people waiting to see me. Nevertheless, this gentleman doesn't look very well at all he can hardly stand and his breathing is stertorous to say the least, so I quickly usher him into the clinic.

Cheikhouna, 30, is a bush-taxi driver from Touba,Senegal's holiest city, located some 350 miles away in the North of the country. This may not sound very far, but on these roads, with the heat, dust and pollution, it's an extremely long trek that has taken him some five days to complete. He was already suffering from a cold on leaving Touba, and has also been fasting (ie taking no food or water from dawn to dusk each day) and despite his symptoms getting steadily worse he kept on driving. Once at his final destination point of Kafountine, he went even further downhill in a strange village where he has no family and just one friend and his presenting state is of concern, to put it mildly.

His breath is coming in short sharp gasps, his expression is panic-stricken, and his speech so rapid that my pretty basic Wolof is stretched to the limit. He rattles out that he feels freezing inside, despite being very hot to the touch and an outside temperature of 35 degrees even at this time in the morning. He has sharp, needle-like pains in all the joints, especially the knees and wrists, and is experiencing frequent bouts of violent coughing which, though painless, result in the expectoration of large amounts of thick yellow mucous (ie pus). He has no appetite at all but wants little sips of water all the time. His blood pressure is 100/60, pulse extremely fast and thready.

However, internally I'm in such a hyper state by this point that I can't even concentrate enough to count his pulserate, let alone sit down to repertorise the case! I suspect Cheikhouna has the beginnings of acute viral pneumonia, and listening to his lungs is a frightening experience both sound almost totally blocked, with the air passing through in wheezes and squeals.

The patient has now been here several minutes and is turning a worrying shade of grey, having to bend far forwards in order to drag some oxygen into his suffering lungs. I'd given him a dose of Aconite 200 immediately after his arrival, but we are nevertheless both in a state of acute panic.

I'm now used to this,being in a state of acute panic, that is,so manage not to show it. However, my emotional state enables me to pinpoint the indicated remedy, despite my brain feeling totally scattered and unable to analyse the presenting symptoms. Arsenicum 200 is duly prescribed and it at least calms me down enough to be able to drink my kankaliba while keeping the patient under observation!

By 9am several more patients are waiting outside and, while Cheikhouna can hardly be described as "cured", his breathing is noticeably less laboured and his skin colour much healthier. Plus the waves of panic I'd been feeling and which almost immediately abated on giving the Ars convince me it's the right remedy. He's eager to get back to his friend, so I send him off with strict instructions to take the remedy on an hourly basis and come back if necessary, and by 4 pm at the latest.